The New Republic

Mitt Romney has been running for president as the Republican nominee, de facto or de jure, for eight months now, and the grand historical joke of it has not yet worn off. A party that has set itself to frantically, fanatically expunge its moderates, quasi-moderates, suspected moderates, and fellow travelers of moderates chose as its standard bearer the lineal heir, biographically and genealogically, to its moderate tradition. It entrusted its holy crusade to repeal Barack Obama’s hated health-care law to the man who had inspired it and run, four years before, promising to do the same for the rest of America. The man and his historical moment could not be more incongruous. It was as if the Mongol tribes of the thirteenth century, setting out to pillage their way across the Asian steppe, had somehow chosen Mahatma Gandhi as their supreme khan.Romney’s capture of the nomination required an incredible confluence of good fortune. Any one of several Republicans—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan—could have outflanked Romney in both grassroots enthusiasm and establishment support but chose not to run. The one candidate with the standing and financial reach to challenge him who did grasp for the prize, Rick Perry, performed his duties with such comic, stammering ineptitude that his final oops-de-grace by that point was not even startling. What remained to challenge Romney was a gaggle of third-raters lacking the money or the rudimentary organization even to get their name on the ballot everywhere. Still, running even against the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (which is to say, running essentially unopposed), Romney still trudged laboriously to victory after endless weeks.But there is another way to make at least some sense of the Romney nomination. READ MORE >>

I don’t know how to say goodbye to a magazine that’s been my home since I was a 23 year old intern one year out of college, where I’ve made some of the best friends in my life, and whose identity has become almost indistinct from my own. Since deciding to accept a job at New York magazine, I’ve tried to write that goodbye, but nothing seems adequate to the scale of the task before me. So, as I’ve learned to do in the face of deadlines, I’m just writing. READ MORE >>

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He proposes a jobs plan that wins the approval of Paul Krugman and David Brooks. Feel the love! READ MORE >>

It always seemed clear to me, though it has not seemed clear to many liberals, that the exquisite care President Obama takes to establish his reasonableness and moderation is the first step of a two-step process. Having disarmed the criticism, if opponents refuse to meet him halfway, he is well positioned to win the ensuing fight. Obama's emphasis on deficit reduction, and the resulting agreement to cut spending and establish a committee to reduce the deficit further, strengthens his position to demand economic stimulus: READ MORE >>

Before I get to commenting on President Obama's speech tonight, I should note this ridiculous "fact check" piece by the Associated Press: President Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions. READ MORE >>

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The most intellectually interesting portion of tonight's Republican presidential debate occurred in its opening moments, when Rick Perry and Mitt Romney sparred over their states’ record of job creation. Perry cited his states record of creating jobs. Romney replied that his state inherited a worse situation, and wound up with a lower level of unemployment, while of course ignoring that Perry has governed during a recession. Perry responded that Romney created jobs at a lower rate than Michael Dukakis. READ MORE >>

My piece in the New York Times magazine last weekend about President Obama and the left kicked up a lot of debate. The thesis was that the left's criticisms that Obama failed to secure enough stimulus. Let me address a couple objections I've seen. One argument claims that my argument hinges on the premise that those who argued for more stimulus are unimportant. Here's what I wrote: READ MORE >>

Dave Barry had a running bit called "Ask Mister Language Person," in which he would dispense grammatical advice as if the rules of grammar were the common uses of the language rather than the real ones. So, for instance, he would dispense advice like this, under "Tips for Writer's": Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe? READ MORE >>